Refreshing Old TV Sit-Coms

Sony Pictures Television is in very early stages of rebooting several classic sitcoms from TV legend Norman Lear as miniseries — including “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons,” and “Good Times” — Variety has learned exclusively.

The idea currently being discussed by Lear and Sony executives would be to have new actors recreate classic episodes of the shows, working from the original scripts, and package them as short, six-episode anthologies. The scripts would be treated similar to plays being mounted in new productions.

“There is some talk about doing some of the original shows, redoing them with today’s stars,” Lear told Variety. “There is a possibility that we’ll do ‘All in the Family,’ ‘Maude,’ ‘The Jeffersons,’ “Good Times.’”

Interesting… I wonder what the driving motivation is for this. If you are familiar with the shows mentioned, they all have a similar underlying theme (not the main theme)… racial tension. Also, with the exception of Maude, all of those shows have strong men with strong opinions. Maude could fit in that category as well because she had strong opinions.

Hopefully my instincts are wrong and we will not continue to turn the clock back on racial relations.